Andrew at Grumpollie does some calculations:

The discussion over at Dim-Post inspired me to have a play with the New Zealand Election Study (NES) data.

Each wave surveys a fairly large sample of voters and a small sample of non-voters. So I was having fun, and I started to wonder what would happen if all the non-voters with a party preference had got out and voted on Election Day.

There are a bunch of caveats to this analysis, including the small sample size and how representative the sample of non-voters was. BUT, if we assume for a moment that the data were broadly representative, then inspiring all non-voters to get out and vote wouldn’t have had a massive impact on the 2011 result.

Andrew calculates that if every non-voter with a preference had voted, then National would have gone up 0.1%, Labour up 1.7%, Greens down 1.0% and NZ First down 0.8%.

So my take on this is that just inspiring a larger turnout won’t necessarily help Labour. In 2008 it would have,but in 2011 it wouldn’t have.

Stuff reports:

Northland Inc chairman Colin Mitten and a group of local businessmen are hatching an audacious plan to build a $125 million data centre in Marsden near Whangarei.

The proposed data centre would be the first “Tier 4” data centre in Australasia, meaning it should be less prone to outages than even the relatively modern facilities built in New Zealand over the past few years by Datacom and IBM.

Mitten said the facility could benefit from, but was not dependent on, Hawaiki Cable’s plan to build a new trans-Pacific fibre-optic communications cable and land it at Bream Bay, near Whangarei.

He believed the chances of that US$350m (NZ$403m) cable project going ahead were “better than 50:50”. Hawaiki’s chief executive, former Alacatel-Lucent executive Remi Galasso, moved his family to New Zealand a few months ago which Mitten took to be a sign of his commitment.

“We mean to engage with Hawaiki further in terms of, ideally, co-locating the termination of the cable,” Mitten said. However, he said there was no formal partnership between the cable and data centre ventures as yet. …

He envisaged the facility would comprise eight 500 square-metre halls, each capable of hosting about 350 racks of computer equipment. However, ACCL would start by kitting out only two to reduce its start-up costs. The $125m expected budget would be the total for setting up the facility and fitting out all eight halls.

At the moment, there are only a small number of true Tier 4 data centres, in the United States and Europe, and none in Australasia, Mitten said. “It sets a very high benchmark in terms of the security of data.

“We have an unparalleled opportunity to attract some of the world’s biggest companies and create exponential job and economic growth opportunities in the region, and the next few years will be crucial to this endeavour,” he said.

Sounds a great initiative. Not sure how the business case will stack up, but would be a great economic boost to Northland if they can make it happen

Stuff reports:

Cupid.com, the popular online dating site, called for a boycott of Mozilla Firefox to protest the world’s Number 2 web browser naming a gay marriage opponent as chief executive.

OkCupid visitors who accessed the website through Firefox on Monday were told in a message to use other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Google’s Chrome.

“Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples,” the message said. “We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.”

“Especially in the kind of modern hero culture, the CEO is equivalent to the company,” said Christian Rudder, an OkCupid co-founder. “We have users who are trying to find other people and we wanted to point out that this browser might be in conflict with their own values.”

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation’s appointment of Eich as CEO on March 24 has attracted criticism from software developers, including its employees who have publicly called for Eich’s resignation on social media.

Eich, the inventor of the programming language Javascript and a Mozilla co-founder, donated US$1000 in 2008 in support of California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state until it was struck down by the Supreme Court in June.

I find this outrageous. Eich made a $1,000 donation to a cause he supported in 2008 (a cause around 40% of Americans agree with) and those with an opposing view basically say he should be blacklisted from employment.

I disagree with Eich on same sex marriage, but his views do not affect his ability to be CEO of Mozilla.  One can absolutely legitimately have a view against same sex marriage, but still be an excellent employer and CEO. Remember Barack Obama was against same sex marriage until 18 months ago – and Bill Clinton was also when he was President.

Turning that issue into a sort of litmus test of acceptability of employment is a new form of McCarthyism.

Toothfish is an anonymous environmental activist, who has facebooked this poster which he or she wants donations for, so they can run at least 1,000 of them.

41 people on Facebook have “liked” the poster including former Green candidate and social media campaigner Max Coyle. Now to be fair to the Greens, I am sure the vast majority of them would find the poster as disgusting as the rest of us. There is a reason Coyle is “former” with them.

Personally I hope he/she gets lots of donations for his or her campaign as I can’t think of anything more likely to increase support for National than people seeing those posters.

Nicholas Jones at the Herald reports:

Efforts to ensure all Kiwi kids can access early childhood education are “way ahead” of a similar American push, says the US Secretary of Education.

Arne Duncan has been in New Zealand at the International Summit on the Teaching Profession in Wellington, one of the biggest events in world education.

In an interview with the Herald, America’s top education official also said charter schools could be a valuable opportunity for New Zealand.

Mr Duncan, who has previously hosted Education Minister Hekia Parata, said he was keen to learn more about New Zealand’s early childhood education while here.

“We are pushing very, very hard back home in the States to increase access to high-quality early learning opportunities,” he said.

“And I think, frankly, New Zealand is way ahead of us in creating those kinds of opportunities at scale.”

The National Government wants 98 per cent of children starting school in 2016 to have participated in quality early childhood education.

In the 2007/08 year $807 million was spent in ECE. The budget for the current financial year is $1.48 billion which is a massive 83% increase in six years. For some reason, Labour and Greens call this a cut!!

The US has more than 5600 public charter schools in 42 out of 50 states, and one in 20 students nationally attends one, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Despite being widespread they do face opposition. Newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has been highly critical of charter schools.

Asked for his overall verdict on them, Mr Duncan said there was “huge variation”.

“I’ve visited some amazing, amazing schools that are absolutely closing achievement gaps. We need to learn from those examples and replicate them. [But] when you have low-performing charter schools you need to challenge that status quo as well.”

Duncan is a Democrat, and a former head of the Chicago public schools. When he says some charter schools have done amazing work at closing achievement gaps, he is worth listening to. Why does the left want to close them down in NZ, rather than give them a chance to succeed?

Mr Duncan said the idea for the schools came from union leader Albert Shanker, who hoped to establish “laboratories of innovation”. Successes could then be spread to the wider education system.

“I think there’s a great opportunity there for this country.”

The left in NZ should embrace charter schools, as many of the left in the US have done.

Stuff reports:

Labour’s high hopes of gaining traction in the National stronghold of Ilam got off to a false start yesterday.

The day started off promisingly, with two nominees – Riccarton-Wigram Community Board member Debbie Mora and Left-wing blogger James Dann – set to contest a selection meeting next week.

Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee has held the Ilam seat since 1996 and, while Labour is unlikely to win the seat, the party had hoped to target it and make the contest there a referendum on the Government’s handling of the quake recovery and Brownlee’s role.

A week may be a long time in politics but try 17 hours.

That’s the time between Mora’s campaign team proudly announcing, through a press release, that she wanted to be the first female to represent Ilam and a brief email, from the same source, saying Mora was out of contention because of “unforeseen circumstances”.

Somewhat Mickey Mouse.

Mora said her campaign manager, Luc Chandler, was “a bit over-eager” in sending out the first release last night.

She had wanted him to hold off for 24 hours – a sensible move considering she was sorting out a possible medical operation.

But then it got even worse when news of Mora leaving the race was given to media – before Labour Party officials were told.

Oh dear.

It leaves plenty of uncertainty over whether the selection process will continue with Dann the anointed candidate or if Labour will have to rethink and get some competition back into the race.

I hope Dann is selected, as that may stop the media quoting him as merely a Christchurch blogger, rather than a Labour candidate as the Herald does.

Stuff reports:

Former Radio NZ news manager Lynne Snowdon has lost her marathon employment dispute with the state broadcaster.

In a decision issued today the Employment Court has scored the legal battle – believed to be the longest running employment dispute – at 3-0 to Radio NZ.

Judge Tony Ford said it was a rare case where Radio NZ had been able to establish on “entirely convincing facts” that Snowdon was substantially responsible for the irreconcilable breakdown in the employment relationship.

Snowdon went on sick leave in January 2003. She was dismissed in April 2005.

It’s insane that this case has dragged on for ten years. Hopefully this brings it to an end. I’ve followed the case for many years and had little doubt it would end this way.

Judge Tony Ford dismissed grounds claiming Snowdon had a disadvantage grievance, was unjustifiably dismissed, and that Radio NZ had falsely represented the financial situation at the heart of Snowdon’s complaints.

He said it had been a relatively straightforward employment dispute that had spiralled out of control.

Snowdon’s husband, John Hickling, told the court last year that it had cost Snowdon and her family more than $3.5 million to fight at that stage.

Snowdon let her grievance become an obsession. Off memory it all began as a dispute with then CEO Sharon Crosbie over the budget for the news division. If you don’t like the budget your boss gives you, then go find a new job – don’t turn it into a ten year dispute. If they really have spent $3.5 million on the fight, then that is even sadder, No one forced them to do so.

Since then the case has consumed another 47-day hearing.

Again, insane.

The judge said Radio NZ was entitled to costs and if the parties could not agree between themselves they would be decided by the court.

As a taxpayer, I want them to recover as many of their costs as possible.

Labour’s master strategy is to get 250,000 extra voters in South Auckland and elsewhere voting for them. I’m not sure how their strategy will fare in light of this story at Stuff:

A small group of influential Pacific Island clergy have sparked fierce debate in South Auckland after they declared they would switch their support from the traditional Labour Party to the National Party.

That is basically unheard of.

The action, taken at the Manurewa flea market on Sunday, is under fire on Pacific Island social media.

The ministers involved have been criticised for not consulting their parishes.

The move has also sparked another meeting next Sunday when, under the auspices of a Samoan Catholic Church, 23 churches will meet to discuss political parties and Christian values.

It’s not an issue for me, or most people, but they may have noticed that not only is Labour’s caucus already over-represented with LGBT MPs, they’ve selected a further four LGBT candidates and inevitably Taurima also. There has always been a tension between their socially liberal activists and some of their more conservative supporters.

A Seventh Day Adventist minister, Teleiai Edwin Puni, said he and five other Seventh Day Adventist ministers – all recognised in the Pacific community – met National MP Cam Calder on Sunday.

“If we are to defend our Christian values and build a brighter future for New Zealand families, we need to engage our Pacific people and vote National,” Puni said.

Cam Calder converts South Auckland to National – well done Cam! 🙂

Fundamentalist pastor Sooalo Setu Mu’a said they had been supporting Labour.

“To change from wearing red to blue is not an easy thing for our Pacific communities who have been voting Labour over the years.”

No party can take any group of supporters for granted.

National has two excellent Pacific Island MPs – Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga and Alfred Ngaro. I suspect their hard work may also be a factor in some Pacific voters reconsidering their traditional allegiances.

I know being in opposition is hard, but you don’t have to try and portray a victory as a defeat. David Cunliffe on NewstalkZB:

TIM FOOKES:     Exactly. So the earlier the better, and I will get to one of your calls in just a moment, but just a quick comment on the issue that came out late last night over the court ruling on whaling, I think this is a significant victory New Zealand and Australia.

DAVID CUNLIFFE:             It’s fantastic. Well, it’s a significant victory for Australia. Where the hell was the New Zealand Government? I mean, we had New Zealanders testifying, but once again, the National Government’s asleep at the wheel. Kiwis hate whaling. We hate whaling and previous governments had a really strong record against it. Why did we leave it to the Aussies to take the thing to the International Court?

So did we leave it to the Aussies and was National asleep at the wheel. Let’s look at the official court ruling from the International Court of Justice:

WHALING IN THE ANTARCTIC (AUSTRALIA v. JAPAN:
NEW ZEALAND INTERVENING)

New Zealand was represented by no less than the Attorney-General, the Deputy Solicitor-General, an Ambassador, five MFAT staff and one of the Attorney-General’s staff. Not exactly asleep at the wheel.

NZ is mentioned 53 times in the judgement.

Also while looking through the transcript a few other fibs:

Well, they did rise in some cases by more, although there has been a real open jawing since of the residential versus industrial power prices and, of course, now, thanks to John Key and his mob, half of that money goes to private investors, most of them offshore. 

Over 70% of investors are domestic. False.

TIM FOOKES:     Well, it’s – look – I am looking in your eyes. Why, then, is John Key so popular? Why does…

DAVID CUNLIFFE:             He has had a long time at it, which is good for him, and I’ve only had a few months, so I’ve got work to do. I completely acknowledge that. Second thing is, he has got the best PR that money can buy. He’s got more money than God. 

How did attacking John Key for his wealth go for David Cunliffe last time he tried it? He doesn’t seem to learn.

And is he really saying that John Key is popular because he uses his personal wealth on purchasing public relations?

If one-quarter of the missing million vote it’s game over red rover, you’ve got a Labour led government, right? One-quarter of the missing million vote – game over. And we’re going to get them to the polls.

Such confidence.

UPDATE: A commenter has pointed out it was Helen Clark who dropped the legal action against Japan on the basis NZ could not win. So Cunliffe was a member of the Government that decided not to take legal action, and he criticises National as being asleep at the wheel, when they are the ones who actually decided to take legal action.

Prime Minister Helen Clark will push for a diplomatic end to whaling after the Government dropped plans for legal action against Japan.

Miss Clark said “fantastic” legal advice – from New Zealand whaling commissioner Sir Geoffrey Palmer – suggested it would be difficult to mount a successful case at the United Nations International Court of Justice.

What an own goal. Maybe a journalist could ask David Cunliffe if he voted in Cabinet in favour of not taking legal action.

Of course he doesn’t seem to think it is fair to point out what he did in Government. From NewstalkZB:

TIM FOOKES:     But, hang on, it was eight and a half per cent or close to 10 per cent in those 2007-2008 years, as well. So why…

DAVID CUNLIFFE:             Yeah, and we could go back to the Holyoake years, and justify all sins by saying, well, when Rob Muldoon was a boy, or Keith Jacka was in Parliament, you know, things were different then. Well, sorry, the current Government has been in power nearly six years. It’s time they manned up and took some responsibility. They cannot get away with excuse after excuse, wah, wah, wah, it was different under Helen Clark. Sorry, guys, grow up. 

Holyoake was Prime Minister 50 years ago. There is a big difference between harking back 50 years and pointing out the record of Labour the very last time they were in office, ad their leader was a senior Minister.

Mike Yardley writes:

He’s the bolter, the bloodhound, the big-hitter. And he is fast stapling his presence on to the city’s consciousness.

Cr Raf Manji, the most impressive newcomer to council, wasn’t elected to office with a pasteurised set of opinions from party central or enslaved to a rigid ideology.

He is an independently minded raging pragmatist, spearheading the drive for better performance and fiscal restraint. The hear-no-evil, see-no-evil culture of conceited mediocrity is what sunk the previous council regime. Its prime adversary was the fearless first-term tiger, Cr Tim Carter.

Manji appears to have picked up the baton from Carter, bringing the same financial rigour and razor-sharp scrutiny to the table.

Take the past fortnight, for example. Manji has publicly grilled council staff for failing to adopt any measures against feckless freedom campers.

The council has had the power to regulate freedom camping for two years. Two years, amigos! Manji has blasted their “dithering” as “just ridiculous”.

I’ve heard several people say very good things about Cr Manji. As Yardley says he’s an independent focused on improving performance and holding the management to account. Dalziel is doing fine so far, but if things don’t improve over the next two years, I won’t be surprised to see Manji standing for Mayor.

The Herald reports:

The tobacco industry has ramped up efforts to persuade New Zealand against plain packaging, by circulating research claiming to show the policy has not worked in Australia.

However, tobacco control experts have dismissed the findings and say it will take years to see the effects of the policy.

Philip Morris, the manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes, has drawn attention to “three separate data sets that demonstrate plain packaging has not reduced smoking rates in Australia”. Two are company-funded surveys of smoking prevalence, by Zurich University and by policy consultancy London Economics. The third is industry sales data, released by the company, showing a 0.3 per cent rise in the volume of tobacco delivered to retailers last year. …

Philip Morris Australia and New Zealand corporate affairs director Chris Argent said that since plain packaging took effect in Australia, “hard data shows that the measure has not reduced smoking rates and has had no impact on youth smoking prevalence”.

“The plain packaging ‘experiment’ in Australia has simply not worked.”

The two surveys tracked prevalence – one of them looking specifically at youth – before and after the introduction of plain packaging.

My view on plain packaging is that *if* plain packaging does reduce smoking rates, then I think it can be justified. However it should only be introduced if the evidence is that it does reduce smoking rates.

The Cancer Council Victoria said the Zurich authors of the youth study had committed a “breathtaking error of logic” in looking for an immediate drop in prevalence. Adolescents’ uptake of smoking was gradual, starting with the first puff, passing through experimentation to an increasing number of cigarettes smoked each day. Plain packaging would take years to affect youth prevalence “because the change needs to occur early in the period of uptake to divert adolescents from becoming regular smokers as they age into adulthood”.

Professor Janet Hoek, of Otago University, echoed these views.

She said it would have been remarkable if the interviewees, after just one year of plain packaging, had “completely forgotten associations the tobacco industry has carefully cultivated over the last decade”. Researchers had always expected plain packaging’s effects on prevalence to occur over the “medium term”, as branding links were replaced in people’s minds by adverse responses to tobacco and smoking.

The logical response to this is to not introduce plain packaging in any further jurisdictions until you do have the evidence that it reduces smoking rates.

In my experience many public health advocates are motivated more by hatred of the companies that sell the products they see as harmful (and tobacco is), rather than actually reducing the harm of the products.

In terms of waiting to see if they work in Australia, one challenge is other measures like changes in excise tax may impact smoking rates also, and we may never know what is the cause of any change.

That is why my preferred way forward is to introduce plain packaging in one region of New Zealand (a large one, maybe even the entire South Island) and then over time measure the change in smoking rates in that region to the rest of NZ. If the change is a greater decline then you have the evidence to introduce it to all of NZ. If there is no measureable impact, then it should be scrapped as ineffective.

Some will say why not do plain packaging, even if it doesn’t work, because anything that hurts tobacco companies is worth doing. Well I can sympathise with that, but I think the precedent it sets is a serious one. Inevitably you will then have certain groups then advocate plain packaging for other products they disapprove of – spirits, beer, wine, soft drinks, fast food etc.

The Herald reports:

Auckland ratepayers have paid $5200 to provide a personal gym for Mayor Len Brown in the Auckland Town Hall.

A new treadmill and multi-gym were installed in a small room on the ground floor of the Town Hall weeks after he was elected mayor in 2010.

Documents released to the Herald under the Official Information Act show the mayoral office requested the equipment for Mr Brown to manage his health and because he could not easily get to a gym.

I thought this was an April Fool’s joke when I first heard about it.

Len gets a large Mayoral salary. It is not the Council’s job to have ratepayers fund him with a personal gym.

The Prime Minister does not have a personal gym. He either goes running or uses the general parliamentary gym which is available to all staff and MPs.

Len’s sense of entitlement is obviously out of control.

Mr Brown refused to answer questions yesterday about the gym equipment.

Not big on fronting up is he.

The latest crime stats are out. As you can see total crime continues to fall. Some people assert that crime has been consistently declining for 20 years or so. This is not quite correct. From 2004 to 2009 crime grew slightly. The change in trend since then is pronounced.

Now I’ve often said I don’t place much reliance on the total crime rate as it treats a minor crime such as possession of cannabis as the same as homicide. Also it can be affected by how much the Police target an area.

Hence the violent crime rate is the one I always focus on most, as victims of violent crimes are most likely to report the assaults. The graph above shows the 20 year trend,

The violent crime rate was fairly flat from 1996 to 2004, massively increased from 2004 to 2009 and since 2009 has been declining for the first time.

On Breakfast on TV1:

DAVID CUNLIFFE:        Absolutely not. In fact there’s a huge difference between what I did, which was to open up a campaign trust that wasn’t even under the Electoral Act, it was an internal party matter, for a trivially small amount of money and said to all of the potential donors through the trustee, you must make yourselves public. The Prime Minister has done none of that. The Prime Minister’s trusts have taken millions of dollars over the last few years and he’s refused to name even a single donor. So I’m afraid the National Party is in absolutely no position to be high minded with me. I have done everything I can to be transparent and frankly, I’ve had about enough of National’s hypocrisy on that matter.

This is a bare faced lie. The Prime Minister, unlike David Cunliffe, does not have any secret trusts for donors.

The National Party used to have trusts for donors to donate through, but they were wound up in 2007 – long before John Key became Prime Minister.

Cunliffe just doesn’t get it. It’s the hypocrisy. He railed against secret trusts and then set one up himself. His party passed a law effectively outlawing the use of such trusts for political parties, and he went and set one up for his leadership contest.

Also the amounts of money are not trivial. The disclosure limit for personal donations and gifts is $500. His secret donors donated ten times the disclosure limit.

And he has not done everything he can to be transparent. He still refuses to name the two remaining secret donors. Rather than face the embarrassment of New Zealanders knowing who his donors are, he refunded the money. That is not transparency.

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key says don’t look to National for a big spend-up in the Budget or in the election campaign, despite the forecast surplus in the next financial year.

And he said some of Labour’s promises, such as extending free early childhood education to 25 hours week, would send New Zealand back to deficit.

The surplus is looking to be relatively modest. As we move into surplus, we don’t want to blow it all of extra spending. A sensible party will “spend” a surplus on a combination of debt reduction, extra spending and tax cuts. Parties may disagree on the exact proportions between the three, but what is unbalanced is a party that only promises one or two of the three.

Part of the surplus had to be used to repay debt and could also be used potentially to build the New Zealand Superannuation Fund or build up the EQC fund.

“In the end if you are going to have the argument that in the bad times, like a Christchurch earthquake or a recession, the Government should borrow money to stimulate or support the economy, by definition in the good times you’ve got to prepare for another rainy day.”

Exactly. This is indeed the time to start paying off debt.

The half yearly fiscal update in December forecast the first surplus to be just $86 million, reach $5.6 billion in 2017 – 18. Finance Minister Bill English had set the new spending allowance for the next four years at about $1 billion a year.

“Bill English’s view is that $1 billion is pretty much the new normal,” he said. …

Labour in Government spent on average $3 billion to $4 billion extra every year for the last five years in office.

Growing spending by $3 billion a year is and was unsustainable.

Mr Key cited Labour’s promise to increase early childhood education from 20 free hours a week for three and four years old to 25 hours a week.

The policy doesn’t take effect until July 2017 but Labour has costed it at $57 million in the first year and about $60 million after that.

Mr Key said the cost was more likely to be $600 million, $700 million or $800 million.

Labour have a long history of under-estimating the cost of their policies. Also what is most important is not the initial costs during the transition, but what is the ongoing annual cost once fully implemented.

The Dom Post reports:

New Zealand is lifting travel sanctions against Fiji, Foreign Minister Murray McCully has confirmed.

In a statement, McCully said the progress Fiji was making towards holding free and fair elections deserved recognition from the Pacific region and international communtiy.

“There are now more than 500,000 people registered to vote in the September elections, electoral commissioners have been appointed and importantly Commodore Bainimarama has stepped down as the head of the Military.

The Fijian elections are three days before the NZ ones.

It is almost inevitable Bainimarama will be elected Prime Minister. What will be interesting is how he copes without military powers and an actual opposition. For me, it is the second election that will be the interesting one.

The Law Commission has released a paper on the current restrictions for suicide reporting. Their release says:

The Law Commission is recommending revising the restrictions in the Coroners Act 2006 regarding reporting suicide.  The new restrictions would be limited to public comment by any person of the method of the suicide death, the place of the suicide where it is suggestive of the method and the fact that the death is a suicide. However, a death would be able to be described as “suspected suicide” where that is supported by the facts. 

That seems a sensible way forward. It is farcical that very obvious suicides have euphemisms such as “no suspicious circumstances” attached to them as a code. Plus of course social media means that there is usually considerable discussion on such suicides (for better or worse) such as Charlotte Dawson’s. Of course as hers was in Australia it could be openly reported here.

The important thing is not giving details, which it is proposed remain prohibited unless released by a Coroner. A key finding is:

We are satisfied that there is widespread agreement amongst experts in this field and world authorities, such as the World Health Organisation, that media reporting can lead to copycat suicidal behaviour by vulnerable people.

Reporting the details of a suicide is protected by the right to freedom of expression in section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. We have concluded that despite extensive evidence of a link between suicide reporting and copycat behaviour, it is only the evidence linking the reporting of the method of suicide to subsequent suicidal behaviour that is strong enough to justify a statutory restriction.

Again I agree.

Hopefully the Government will take up the recommendations at some stage.

The above graphs tracks all the public polls since the election, averaging them out every month. The trend for Labour over the last six months is quite pronounced.

The newsletter summary is:

There were five political polls in March – a One News Colmar Brunton poll, a Fairfax Reid Research poll, a NZ Herald Digipoll and two Roy Morgan polls.

The average of the public polls has National 17% ahead of Labour in March, the same margin as in February. The current seat projection is centre-right 64 seats, centre-left 56 which would see National form a Government.

In Australia Labor retains a narrow lead, but there have been improvements in the national mood.

In the United States President Obama’s numbers are stable overall but dipping for handing of foreign policy – probably due to the Ukraine crisis.

In the UK Labour’s lead has dipped to just 3% in the wake of a generally positive budget for the Government. David Cameron’s ratings are also increasing.

In Canada the Liberals remain ahead in the polls, but no party is projected likely to win a majority.

We also carry details of polls in New Zealand on the Kim Dotcom, the NZ Flag, Countdown, Len Brown, income inequality Labour’s baby bonus plus the normal business and consumer confidence polls.

This newsletter is normally only available by e-mail.  If you would like to receive future issues go to http://listserver.actrix.co.nz/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/polling-newsletter to subscribe yourself.

The Taxpayers’ Union has welcomed the very overdue news:

The Taxpayers’ Union has warmly welcomed the decision of Winston Peters and the New Zealand First Party to pay back the $158,000 the party owes the taxpayer.

Executive Director Jordan Williams has said “On behalf of our members and supporters, we congratulate Winston Peters for his show of leadership in deciding to pay back the $158,000. It’s a principled decision that reflects well on New Zealand First”

“While some commentators may be churlish at the length of time it has taken to arrange repayment, we believe the maxim ‘better late than never’ definitely applies in this case.”

The $158,000 debt relates to parliamentary spending by the New Zealand First Party in 2005, that the Auditor-General found to be unauthorised and illegal. All other parties repaid their unauthorised spending prior to the 2008 election.

With NZ First rising in the polls, this news will push them up even further.

Australia (with support from New Zealand) has won against Japan in the International Court of Justice with a 12-4 ruling that Japan’s whaling programme is not scientific research and it has stated that Japan should not issue any further permits.

The decisions of the ICJ are final and can not be appealed. Of course a state could refuse to implement them, but the reputational loss would be massive.

Japan may halt their whaling programme entirely, or try and create a new “scientific” programme in the future. It has been suggested in the past that they wanted to end it anyway, but didn’t want to be seen giving into the quasi-terrorism of Sea Shepherd. So hopefully they will accept the court ruling, abandon the pretense that the whaling was for scientific purposes and cease operations. That would be a good thing.

10 years ago today was the day I left a fulltime job at Parliament to become self-employed and set up Curia Market Research.

While I was fortunate to have one significant initial client, it was still a leap into the dark to go from a fixed income to a variable income. And like many self-employed people my earnings in the first couple of years was significantly less than what I was earning as an employee.

Curia has been very fortunate to have some incredibly talented staff who have actually run much of the business for me, allowing me to focus on the stuff I enjoy – the polling. From the early days of Ross, Anna, Yvette and Katrina to my current managers and supervisors of Basma and Rebecca – and many in-between. One of the nice things about being a business owner is you are forced to get good at delegating, as there is too much to do, to do it all yourself.

During the last decade, Curia has (approximately):

• Worked for 92 clients
• Conducted around 1,100 polls
• Employed over 500 staff
• Paid several million dollars of tax

It’s enjoyable running a business where clients choose you entirely on your reputation, quality and price. We’ve never done advertising or soliciting of business. It’s all pretty much been word of mouth. Market research is a competitive industry and there are many other very good firms out there. I’m just pleased we’ve managed to grow the market, and find a useful niche for ourselves.

I enjoy the fact that as a business owner I’m playing a small contribution to economic growth and providing employment to a lot of students (and a few others), to help finance their studies.

The decade has gone by quickly. I became a business owner at age 36 and am now 46. I guess the good thing is I hopefully have two or three more decades of self-employment to go – if things continue to go well. There’s no guarantee of that, but I’m optimistic.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand retailers are falling behind other sectors of the economy in their use of the internet to drive sales and business management, says a major new study funded by internet NZ and the global internet search engine, Google.

The “Value of internet Services to New Zealand Businesses” report, issued this morning, says firms using the internet well are between 6 per cent and 11 per cent more productive than their competitors in the same field. Best practice users were as much as 73 per cent more productive than average businesses in their industry.

The report suggests if all businesses were using the internet to its full potential, New Zealand’s economy – currently worth around $210 billion of output annually – could get a $34 billion efficiency and productivity boost.

Maybe retailers should stop trying to tax the Internet and should embrace it more!

The research was conducted by the economic research consultancy Sapere and used data from 5,589 businesses in the Statistics New Zealand Business Operations Survey.

It excluded firms in the information technology sector, which were presumed to be high internet users and interviews with 76 businesses were conducted in the tourism, retail, dairy/agriculture, and professional services sectors.

The report says while internet speed and connectivity were once the major issue, that is no longer so. The use to which the internet is put is the larger issue for most firms.

In the retail sector, where the common complaint is that e-commerce is robbing traditional shops of sales, the survey found retailers were “slightly lower users of internet services than businesses as a whole.”

“They are less likely to have a website, less likely to have most of their staff online, and less likely to use fibre, with bigger firms generally higher users than smaller firms.

“On our numbers, it is highly unusual for retailers to be selling a lot online at this point, with only 3 per cent of firms reporting that more than a quarter of their sales are made online, although retailers are heavy online purchasers.”

And of interest:

It reports one service provider as saying no more than one in 12 New Zealand retailers was doing a good job of integrating online and offline stores.

So huge potential there if it is grasped. The full report, for those interested, is here.